Combat will be 'quite different' in Mass Effect 3, says dev

More Info

BioWare has teased that Mass Effect 3’s combat will be “quite different” to previous instalments in the series.

Chatting to PC Gamer, producer Casey Hudson revealed the team has implemented a number of fresh elements to spice up battles, including meatier melee moves and other ‘special activities.’

“It’s quite different, that’s where we’re putting a lot of our fun new special activities, around these new abilities that they have,” said Hudson.

“So we’re giving them heavier melee stuff that they might do, or one of them is able to suck back the health of the enemies you’ve killed around it. So as you’re killing enemies next to it, your squadmates are working on this character, and it’s able to suck in the health.”

Elsewhere, Hudson also touched on some of the tactical decisions players can make in combat. For example, when going up against one of the hulking mechs, gamers can opt to destroy the machine itself or target the Cerberus that’s controlling it.

“One of them is the Atlas that you saw, so it’s the big kind of mech thing. The cool thing about that is obviously once you see it moving, you get more of an idea of what it’s about – it’s a massive, heavy thing that’s got a huge cannon on it,” he explained.

“But it’s piloted by a Cerberus trooper that’s on the inside – you can actually see him in there, and if you concentrate on the little glass shield that he’s behind, if you can take that shield out. Then you can damage the guy that’s in there, and then you kill the guy and the machine’s dead. Or likewise if you kill the machine, then the guy can hop out and you fight him. So there’s some fun stuff in there in terms of fighting a machine that’s actually piloted by a guy.”

Mass Effect 3 is pencilled in for release in Q1 2012 for PlayStation 3, PC and Xbox 360.